


The Dog King

by orphan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Demon True Forms, Gen, Healing, Platonic Relationships, Post-Episode: s12e23 All Along the Watchtower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 20:51:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11089677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan/pseuds/orphan
Summary: The boys were always going to pull her out. Mary never doubted it. Neither had Lucifer.





	The Dog King

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of my vent for s12, I guess. Originally it was just going to be drawerfic but, eh. To (a-har) Hell with it. Here it is. It's more of an idea-for-an-AU than a fic in-and-of-itself, so you'll have to excuse the huge infodump in the middle that really should've been written... literally in any other way than that. Eh.
> 
> Note that this also tweaks Mary's character around a bit, mostly because I hated (hate-hate- _hated_ ) what they did with her. Ugh. So if you're in for happy fluffy, pie-baking Momma Winchester this is... probably not the fic for you. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> Other **warnings** include referenced torture, rape and threatened rape, mind-control, involuntary body mutilation, and slavery (including sexual slavery). None of it is actually shown "on screen", but characters do talk about it having happened.
> 
>  _I got gallons of blood_  
>  _Can't remember where it's from_  
>  _Just clippings on the wall_  
>  _I guess it's[stuff that I have done](https://vimeo.com/83451141)._

The boys were always going to pull her out. Mary never doubted it. Neither had Lucifer.

“You should've left me there,” she tells them, skin still shaking and stomach still heaving from being wrenched across dimensions. The sky is too blue and the grass is too green, and somewhere in the distance Mary can hear cars (cars!).

Somewhere, in the distance, Lucifer plots revenge.

And here, Mary. Alone, without her Pack. She shudders, fights down the nausea and the cold sense of isolation, digging in beneath her skin.

Dean is giving her that look again. Like she's taken a knife and run it through his belly. She remembers that look. Hates it. _Did you know?_ she wants to ask him. _What they did to me, to us? Did you_ know _?_

She doesn't ask. She already knows the answer.

“Mom,” he's saying. “We couldn't— We couldn't lose you. Not again.”

Mary stands. Forces herself to stand. Forces her legs to hold her steady.

“You freed Lucifer,” she says.

“Mom—”

“You gave him exactly what he wanted.” She makes her voice like a knife lest it bleed into a wound. “You let him _win_.”

“We couldn't just—”

“A year,” Mary says. “A year I was in that place—”

“I'm sorry.” Sam, misunderstanding. “We tried to get you out sooner, but—”

“—and in all that time, you know what kept me going? ‘Lucifer will lose’. I repeated it to myself, over and over. We all did. There weren't many rules but that one was inviolate. Lucifer will lose. And you— you broke that.”

“We couldn't leave you there,” Dean repeats.

“You should have,” Mary snarls, and believes it. “And I… I'm going to need some time.”

* * *

She moves back into the Bunker, tries to tell herself the sight of the aquarian star doesn't make her hands shake or the bile rise in her throat. Her bed is too soft and too small and too cold, all at once; no heartbeat beneath her ear, no hot breath against her neck.

Her sons are still strangers to her.

They're trying, she knows that. They reach for her, and she wants to reach back. They're strong, proud, capable men. She wants to be able to look at them—really _look_ at them—without hearing that awful voice, oozing down her back like poisoned honey.

( _“Heaven’s little brood-bitch,”_ he'd called her. _“Took a few tries to get you mounted but the cherubs worked it out in the end. They always do. So much for Dad’s ‘free will’, hey?”_ )

It isn't the boys’ fault, she knows that. Still.

Hunts keep her occupied. Demons, mostly.

“We haven't seen activity like this in… in years,” Sam says. He's scowling down at a map, circles in red and black—mostly black—-mottled like open sores around towns and cities. “It's old-school stuff, too. Plagues, blighted crops, rains of blood… Plus the usual killings and mutilations.”

“Daddy’s home,” Dean says. There's a pause, long and heavy and awful. “Do you think…” But he bites off the end of the sentence before he can say it, lips thin and grim.

“Doesn't matter,” Mary says. “We’ll kill them. Every last one.” Her hands touch the claw hanging around her neck. A demon’s claw, from the Other Place, strung on a cord of human hair. Her boys think it's a trophy, and it is. Of a sort. Just not the sort they think. “Lucifer will lose.” She repeats the mantra. Will keep doing it until he does.

“We don't even know what he's planning,” Sam says. “With… with Jack, and—”

“Lucifer will lose. There's no other option.”

* * *

It takes her nearly four months to assemble what she needs; both the ritual and the ingredients. The process is painstaking, not just because the components are hard to acquire (they are), but because she has to gather them without the boys realising what she’s about to try. They watch her now, all the time; a grotesque, broken mix of devotion and suspicion. Not unearned, she supposes. They wouldn't approve of what she's about to do. That's why she's out here—alone, at night—to do it.

Of course, the boys find her.

“Mom!” Dean's eyes glisten in the firelight. “You can't do this. We won't let you do it.”

“It's too late,” Mary says, and it is. The fire leaps, sparks, flames a blazing sickly green then brilliant, ruby red. Mary feels the blood run down her forearms, feels it writhe like a red-scales serpents thing. Her boys shout something and leap forward, but she's prepared for it and they bounce back off the barrier with a crash. So knows so many more clever-wicked things than she used to. “Stay back,” she warns them. “You can't stop this.”

When the world cracks, they all feel it. The blood is whirling around her in a thick, red mist, and she screams as she pushes it forward. The space _between_ is so far, but she keeps pushing, the blood and life pouring from her as she does. Dimly, she thinks her boys are shouting. Calling for their pet monster, she thinks, except this place is warded, of course it is. It won't hold for long but hopefully, hopefully, it'll be long enough.

And then, just before the darkness threatens to overwhelm her vision, she feels something _grab back_.

This time, she cries out in triumph, wrenching backwards on the blood-smoke lines that seep between the worlds. Reeling in is easier than reaching out, if only because the presence on the other side is _strong_. Powerful. Dark and seething, as black as sin and red as fury and when it bursts through into the world it forces the crack wider.

Mary shuts her eyes and opens her arms as the tidal wave of darkness rolls over her. For a moment, she hears the howls—victorious and unbound—and feels the hot winds of sulfur and ash against her skin. There's a brief feeling of embrace—claws pressing into her back, scale against her breast—and then it's gone, and the smoke clears.

“Mom!”

Her boys race forward, eyes wide and frantic. She rises before they reach her, arms and hands soaked in blood and footsteps stumbling and light-headed.

The arms that catch her aren't from her own flesh and blood.

“Easy,” the voice growls into her ear. “Easy now.”

Mary collapses against a dust-caked jacket. “Did… did it—?”

“It worked.” The words are muttered, low. For Mary’s ears only. “Rex got ‘em through. You did good.”

She exhales, exhausted and relieved. The magic to pry apart the worlds is dark and forbidden for a reason. Using it has left her… eroded. But she doesn't regret it. Everything comes with a price.

“Mom?” Sam’s voice, close. Then, before Mary can answer:

“… Bobby?”

Dean stumbles forward. One step, two. Bobby shifts his grip on Mary’s shoulder and watches the approach, wary. He's met these men once and briefly, but he's spent the last year listening to stories. Mary knows what he thinks of her boys and she sighs. “It's okay,” she tells him. “They're… they're okay.”

Bobby huffs. “We’ll see,” he says. “First, we wrap you up. You got a kit?”

Mary does. Bobby sits her down carefully next to the burnt-out ritual circle. Then he goes to retrieve the first aid kit from Sam, who’s already retrieved it.

“You… This was about Bobby?” Dean keeps looking between them like he isn't sure that this is real. “About bringing back Bobby?”

 _Mary must live,_ Mary thinks. _Lucifer will lose. Find Bobby Singer._

Out loud, she says:

“He looked after me. I'd be dead, otherwise.”

Bobby just scoffs. “Like Hell you would. You don't need an old man like me to babysit.” To the boys, he adds: “Mary goddamn Campbell was always the best of us. Gettin’ her back… well. Ain't gonna say no to that, am I?”

“Thank you,” Dean says. “I…” He looks at Mary, then away. “I just… thanks.”

Bobby grunts, and sews up Mary’s arms.

* * *

It's all about misdirection. Rex taught her that. _Give them the show and they won't look for the trick,_ he'd said, once. They'd been planning strategy, wanting to hit one of the Loyalist nests on the edge of the Bloodwaste. One of the Packs had gotten wind of a Scion being routed through and the idea had been to do a snatch-and-grab.

“We do that, and every convoy from here to Dis gets locked down tighter than an angel’s bloody knickers,” Rex had growled.

“It's a Scion,” Mary had replied. “It'll have info. Plans. Weapons, maybe. Things are getting thin, you know that. We need the win.”

Rex had growled, low and frustrated, steps heavy as he'd paced the length of their squalid little den.

“We go in stupid, we ain't coming out,” Bobby had said.

“So we go quiet,” Mary had said. “Send one of the Shadowpacks, slip in under the wards, and get out before those angelfuckers can respond.”

“Risky. Too risky. If they get caught—”

“They won't.” Rex had stopped his restless movement. “Not if they're chasing their own tails looking for something else.” He'd been twirling a rib-bone across the scutes of his heavy knuckles, over and under the claws, before having it seemingly vanish into his palm.

“Nothing up your sleeve?” Mary had asked him. Rex did magic for real but he could do old school Vegas street tricks, too. Hell, once she'd even seen him juggle. It'd been severed heads but, well. Rex was like that.

He'd crossed over to her, dark and heavy and huge. Terrifying, objectively, except she'd long since stopped being afraid. He'd held up first one claw—twirling it for effect—then the other. Then he'd reached behind her head, and pulled the bone out of her hair.

“Always, my dear,” he'd growled, bifurcated lower jaw split open in a glowing, shark-toothed grin.

They'd grabbed the Archon, in the end. Grabbed the Archon and destroyed the nest when they'd been at it. Bobby had hacked off half the Archon’s limbs and thrown them into the pile corpses. Just another victim of the Dog King’s mindless raiding; no plan, no strategy, no reason. Nothing to see.

Nothing at all.

* * *

The boys’ pet monster is waiting for them outside the cabin, wide-eyed and disheveled. It's tame enough but Mary can barely look at it. Not after what she's seen, when she _knows_.

“You're hurt,” it says to her, reaching out a hand.

“ _Don't_ ,” Mary snarls, whole body shuddering in revulsion. “Don't touch me.” She's leaning heavily on Bobby and he shifts their angle, shielding her with his frame. He eyes the angel, wary.

“I… see,” it says in response. “I felt the rift open.”

“Mom brought back Bobby,” Dean says. He sounds… hopeful. Mary pities him, just a little bit.

“Nothing else? I thought I felt—”

“It's bad magic,” Mary slurs, because it is. “Witch magic. But I did what I had to do.”

“I understand,” says the angel, but Mary feels it's cold eyes on her all the way to the truck.

* * *

Mary helps Bobby set up in a little cabin in Colorado. It's small but comfortable. Open-plan and modern, with two bedrooms, a den, kitchen, bathroom, and not much else, all settled at the end of a long dirt road in Grand Mesa National Forest.

Dean, of course, hates it.

“You don't have to be alone,” he says. “You, um. You should stay with us.”

Bobby just scoffs. “In that underground death trap? Nope, not happening. Gonna enjoy the sun and the quiet for a while.”

Dean scowls, obviously unhappy, but doesn't argue.

They spend the rest of the day setting up the cabin. Dean does repairs, Mary handles the warding, Sam takes Bobby into town to buy things like plates and clothes. Mary half expects a fight—something about doing just fine without all that junk—but Bobby goes quiet and, if Mary isn't mistaken, _happy_. Good. Old bastard deserves a bit of happy.

“So…” Dean says, not ten minutes after they're alone. “You, um. You didn't tell us you met Bobby.”

“You didn't ask,” says Mary, and hates herself a little. She doesn't _want_ to be cruel. It's just… it's difficult.

She never wanted to be a mother. Not before Heaven got its hooks into her. Now she has two adult sons and a constant battle against their memory of a woman who never existed. She doesn't blame them, and she wants to love them, it's just… difficult.

“Mom…” Dean looks at her, then away. She sees his throat work, watches the flutter of his lashes as he blinks.

“He… sheltered me,” Mary eventually manages. “When I got away from Lucifer. We lived together, hunted together. He's… he's a good man.”

Dean nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. He's the best.”

They fall back into silence, bar the sound of hammering and the soft _shick shick_ of Mary’s paintbrush. She has to be careful with the warding; it has to be good, but not perfect, and she can't let Dean notice the difference. Not yet.

“What… what was it like?”

“Hm?”

Deans voice is hesitant, small. “The, um. The other place. We didn't… You didn't wanna talk about it. So we didn't ask, but…” He trails off, uncertain for a moment, then: “But if you do, we wanna listen.”

Mary thinks. Wonders how much she can say without showing her hand.

“It was… harsh,” she finally says. “All war zones are, I suppose. But it wasn't all bad. I had my Pack.”

“‘Pack’?”

“Bobby,” Mary says. She hesitates, then: “And… and Rex.”

“Rex? Like, a dog?”

Mary laughs, but it's clenched and bitter. “He'd been kept as one, for a while.”

“Jesus.”

“He helped me. At the start. He got me away from Lucifer, brought me to Bobby.” _Mary must live. Lucifer will lose. Find Bobby Singer._ “After, we hunted together. That was the Pack.”

“You, um. Hunted… what, exactly?”

“Demons, for the most part. Angels if they got in the way, sometimes humans, if they'd… gone bad. But mostly it was demons. Rex… he _loathed_ them.”

“They, uh. They the ones who—” Dean makes a vague gesture. Mining a collar, perhaps.

“Close enough.” It isn't Mary’s story to tell. “He could tear apart a nest in the time it'd take you to blink. Ruthless, efficient. It's what… what he'd been made into. A hunting dog. But Rex, he bit the hand. Would've run howling, claws first, into Hell if he could've.”

“He sounds, uh…” Dean trails off, but Mary hears what he can't say. _He sounds like Ketch_. And maybe there's some truth to that. But only some.

“He never hurt us, me and Bobby. That would've been… Would've been letting them win. Rex, he was a lot of things but, more than anything, he was loyal. It was his anchor, against what has been done to him.” _Mary must live. Find Bobby Singer._ “I owe my life to him. More than once.”

Dean nods. “He, uh… what happened to him?”

Mary closes her eyes, sighs. “I… I can't talk about that.” Not yet.

“Yeah,” says Dean. “That's… Yeah. I get it.”

 _No,_ Mary thinks. _You don't. But you will._

* * *

Bobby and Sam return just before dusk, car filled with boxes and bags. Mary helps them unpack, fills in the small kitchen with plates and cutlery and appliances. The crockery isn’t what she’d expected; heavy handmade stoneware with glazes in brown and green and blue. They’re the dishes of someone who cares about his house, about his kitchen, and she smiles as she packs them carefully away.

The boys helps set up the television and the laptop, and those Bobby does complain about. He’s started filling in a bookshelf with battered paperbacks; _Nausea_ , _Beyond Good and Evil_ , _The Myth of Sisyphus_ , _The Ethics of Ambiguity_. Mary pulls the later off the shelf and flicks through.

 _To declare that existence is absurd,_ the text says, _is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; so to say it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won._

She scoffs. “Not exactly light reading.”

“De Beauvoir,” Bobby says. “Existentialist stuff, how to find meaning in a godless universe, that sort of thing.”

“‘If God does not exist, everything is permitted’?” Yeah, Mary’s read a book or two in her day. So shoot her.

Bobby just gives a huff of laughter. “Everythin’ being permitted don’t mean nothing is forbidden,” he counters. Then taps the spine of _The Myth of Sisyphus_. “That’s in that one. The universe is pointless and cold and cruel, nothing happens for a reason and nothing means jack shit in the end. It’s all just an endless struggle, Sisyphus rollin’ that rock up the hill, over and over again.”

“That’s… depressing.”

“You only thing that ‘cause you’ve been taught to think of Sisyphus as a miserable old bastard, and the rock as his punishment. But Camus, he says, why not imagine Sisyphus happy? Pushin’ the rock don’t mean nothing in the long run, but maybe rollin’ it’s just plain fun. It ain’t about the goal, it’s about the journey. And Sartre and Nietzsche and de Beauvoir, they all talk about how it’s not about why you’re rolling the rock, or where. It happened, you gotta accept it. You can’t undo the things you did to get you there, and all the wishin’ and prayin’ in the world won’t get you outta it. So you just gotta make peace with the rock; knuckle down and push it, and try not to roll it over anyone else along the way.”

Mary doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so just replaces the book on the shelf.

Bobby sighs and runs calloused fingers over the cracked spines of the paperbacks. “I guess it ain’t for everyone,” he says. “But… it helped me. After Karen. I thought maybe…” He trails off, eyes shifting to where the boys are fiddling with cables and pretending not to eavesdrop.

“Yeah,” says Mary, who knows exactly what he can’t say. “I hope you’re right.”

* * *

Thing is, though. Bobby’s books? They're wrong. Because there is a God and things do happen for a reason. There is meaning. It's just not a meaning for people like Bobby. Or for Mary. Or Rex.

Because God’s an asshole, and he plays favorites. And his favorites, they're the ones who get the grand narrative and the hero’s journey. They get the thematic unity and the essentialist truths. It's everyone else who has to deal with the absurd.

Mary watches Bobby in the dark, his face slack against the pillow. The boys had been weird about the sleeping arrangements but Mary had been beyond giving a shit. For the first time in a long time—certainly since she was brought back, maybe longer—Mary feels at peace. And if the patch of shadow in the corner of the room is a little darker than it should be? If the ember-red pinpricks of light that stare out from it don't belong to the LEDs of the alarm clock or the laptop charger? Well. That's just part of the appeal.

That night, Mary sleeps better than she has in years.

* * *

It takes the boys nearly a month to notice something’s going on in Hell. Even then, it’s only because they walk straight into the aftermath of it.

“Jesus. This… it’s like the set of a goddamn _Hostel_ film in here,” is Dean’s opinion.

They’re standing in the middle of a supposedly abandoned farmhouse. It reeks of shit and blood and sulfur, and is only currently “abandoned” by virtue of every single inhabitant being dead. Messily so; viscera hangs from the light fittings and blood paints the walls. When they walks, their boots squelch in the carpet, and every surface is covered in half-gnawed limbs and cracked-open rib-cages.

“What the hell happened here?” says Sam, apropos.

Mary says nothing. She finds what she’s looking for carved into the wood panelling in the den. She runs her fingers across the thick grooves, trying to estimate the size of the claws that gouged it.

“What…. what’s that?”

Mary doesn’t turn when her sons come up behind her. Instead, she just says, “Pack mark.”

“What?”

Mary traces the furrows of the glyph. “It’s a… message. From the Sin Eaters that cleared this place out. We should go. There’s nothing left for us to hunt.”

“… Mom?” She hates that little-boy-betrayed edge in Dean’s voice.

“You’ve seen this before,” Sam says. “In… in the other place?”

Mary nods.

“Who… _what_ are they? These ‘sin eaters’?”

“Demons,” Mary says. “Demons who hunt demons.”

“Why?”

A shrug. “Hell has its own politics. And it’s been unstable since…” She makes a vague gesture. Sam nods, swallowing thickly.

“We ain’t walking if there’s demons loose,” Dean says. “‘Specially not ones who’d do _this_.” He gestures to the half-eaten bodies.

“Eaters are vicious. But they don’t hunt humans,” Mary says. “They don’t do deals. They don’t even take meatsuits.”

Sam studies the claw marks in the wall. “We’ve… seen demons like that before,” he says, slowly. “But they were always just… smoke. Nothing that could do _this_.”

“Demons have their own skins,” Mary says. “Manifesting like that topside makes them vulnerable, more than the smoke. So they don’t, usually. But they can.”

“You know an awful lot about this,” Dean says.

“Yeah, well. I had to learn. Fast.”

The boys both look away, and Mary hates herself. Just a little.

* * *

It’s Sam who notices the pattern.

“There’s still way more demonic activity than we’re used to,” he saying, indicating his map, “but for the last month it’s been… been more demon-on-demon than anything else.” There’s purple on the map now, alongside the red and black. The colors seep into each other, oozing into mottled bruises of ink.

“You think we’re seeing… what?” Dean asks. “Some kinda demonic civil war?”

“That’s what it looks like, yeah.”

“Who against who, though? I thought Lucifer had ‘em all locked down pretty tight.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s playing factions off against each other, who knows? What we do know, is we keep seeing this symbol.” Sam hands over his tablet, and Dean starts flicking through the photo album. Mary glances at it but not hard. She already knows what she’s going to see: glyphs carved by thick claws, a sinuous curve bisected by three shorter lines, topped with three more like a crown. Pack signs, too, and those do interest her. Because while she recognizes most, there are others she doesn’t. Which… good. That means there are converts.

“So these guys”—Dean taps the crowned curve—“either have a massive hate-on for Lucifer—”

“Or they’re trying to win his favor,” Sam counters.

“Either way, they’re tough sons of bitches, I’ll give ‘em that.”

“I think… I think we should find out what we’re dealing with,” Sam says. “If they’re fanatics on Lucifer’s side then we need to find a way to deal with them.”

“And if they’re not?”

“Then maybe we’re dealing with someone new. Someone who thinks they can take on an archangel. You can’t tell me that doesn’t make you nervous.”

“As if we don’t have enough shit to deal with,” Dean mutters.

* * *

It takes them two days to track down someone to torture for information.

The demon is no-one in particular, just some bottom-feeding Crossroads suit. They have to go through a proxy to summon it, but it’s easy enough to lock down and transport when it does.

Mary lets the boys do their posturing and their routine; flicking holy water and threatening the sniveling piece of shit with an angel blade. She expects it to crumple like cheap polyester but, surprisingly, it doesn’t.

“Go on, you angelfucking sacks of shit,” the demon snarls. “Kill me. I’m dead anyway. The next purge, the one after. It doesn’t matter. This way, at least I get to say I got taken out talking shit to the _Winchesters_.” It snarls the name like an insult.

“You won’t get to say anything, assface,” Dean says. “You’ll be dead.”

Sam, meanwhile: “What do you mean, ‘purges’?”

The demon spits. It can’t move much—not with the chair its shackled to—but Mary supposes it’s the thought that counts.

“What do you fucking care?” it says. “You never did before.”

“Lucifer is purging the Crossroads,” Mary guesses. From the way the demon narrows its eyes, she knows she’s right.

“I ain’t telling you shit, whore.”

Mary just rolls her eyes. “Let it stew for a while,” she says, moving towards to door. “We’e not in a hurry. And it’ll talk eventually.”

As it turns out, eventually is two days later. Mary bides her time, waits until the boys leave on a hunt. They’re taking their pet with them, this time, so Mary refuses to accompany them.

“Mom.” Dean’s giving her the disappointed look. “Please. He won’t… It’s not like it was, in the other place.”

“I know,” says Mary. “But that doesn’t mean I can forget what was.”

It’s not a lie, but it’s also a cover. She waits about an hour after the boys leave before she makes her move, walking alone in the room below where the hapless demon is still bound. It watches her enter, eyes blood-red and calculating.

“I have to admit,” Mary tells it, “you’ve held up better than I expected.”

“Oh, please. You assfucks turn torture into a tickle convention. I’m practically on holiday here.”

Mary nods, takes the seat across the table from the demon. “No argument there,” she says. “The boys… they mean well. But they don’t really have it in them.”

“And, what? Their Stepford Mom does? Please.”

Mary makes a noncommittal sound, and begins unbuttoning her blouse.

“Oh ho ho! Now you’re talkin’! You want me to—”

“Shut up,” Mary says. There’s no heat to it. Just cold, calculating, calm. When she’s undone enough buttons, she slips one side of the shirt down her shoulder, then she turns to show the demon her back.

“—pretend to beg? ‘Cause I can do that. We can have a oh, oh _fuck_. Oh, fuck no.” And there, there it is. The fear.

Mary buttons back up her blouse, hiding the scarred Pack-mark back beneath the fabric.

“No,” the demon is saying. “No fuckin’ way. You just… you did that to yourself. You ain’t the fuckin’ Dog King’s bitch.”

“No,” Mary agrees. “But I am his Pack.”

“Fuck you, whore. The King ain’t got no fuckin’ _humans_ in his Pack.”

“Really?” Mary asks. “Then how do you think he got here? Who do you think let him through?” She touches the hollow of her throat. The place where the claws used to hang. Until she burnt it, opening the walls between the worlds.

“I… I ain’t…” The demon’s eyes dart, back and forth, looking for an out. Mary knows the moment it realizes it won’t find one. “Look,” it says. “Look. I… I didn’t have a choice, right? You think I wanted any of this shit to happen? I _liked_ the way things were! I got nice digs, sweet suit, good portfolio… Fuck. I was a fuckin’ stockbroker before all this, you know that? A paper-pusher. I ain’t no soldier, I don’t wanna fight no fuckin’ war. I’m here to sell—”

“Sell sin to saints,” Mary finishes. “I know.”

The demon blanches, then looks away. “Fuck,” it says. “I… Look. I didn’t have no part in how it all went down.”

“I know,” Mary repeats. “But you wouldn’t have stopped it, either.”

The demon still won’t meet her eyes. “I ain’t no soldier,” it repeats, quieter.

“You didn’t have any part in what happened, but you have a part _now_. You need to understand that.”

The demon nods. “What… what’re you gonna do with me?”

“That’s up to you,” Mary says. She gestures towards the far side of the table. “Who’s the suit?”

A shrug. “Teacher,” the demon says. “Good tits, nice ass. Sells the deal. Y’know how it is.”

“How much is going to fall off if you smoke?”

The demon almost, _almost_ looks affronted. “Hey. I… I take care of my shit, all right? It’s those angelfuckin’ Loyalists who think it’s fun to ride ‘em into the ground.”

“Good,” Mary says. “So get out.”

“Fuck you.” But there's not as much heat it in as there could be.

“I'm doing you a favour,” Mary says. “You get out, and you hide. What's coming isn't a war, it doesn't need soldiers. It's going to be a _massacre_.”

“Yeah? An-and after that? Then what?”

Mary grins, dark and broken and vicious. “Then,” she says, “you'd better be prepared to bow.”

* * *

Of course, she underestimates her boys. And the technology.

Once the recording’s done playing, Dean slams the lid to the laptop. He won't meet Mary’s eyes, jaw working like he's an inch from tears.

Cameras. In the basement. Of course there were. Shit.

“Mom?” Sam is, apparently, being Good Cop. “You… you wanna tell us what that was?”

“You saw it,” Mary says.

“You… let the demon go.”

Mary shrugs. She's spent all afternoon comforting the suit, Julie—reassuring the girl, making sure she had a way home—and doesn’t feel like justifying it to Sam.

“Mom, please?”

She's supposed to melt, she knows. He little boy is begging her, and she's supposed to feel it. To feel _something_ , to break off a piece and use it to tend his hurts. She's supposed to, but she doesn't. Forty years, and Mary has no more pieces left to give.

Eventually, Sam drops his eyes and looks away. Then, after a moment:

“Who is the ‘Dog King’?”

Except, before Mary can answer, it's Dean who puts the pun together.

“Rex. It's your… your freakin’ ‘buddy’ Rex.”

Mary nods. “Yes.”

“A goddamn demon.”

“Yes.”

“And… and you let it through.” Dean's voice is as hard and brittle as broken glass. “That night. We thought… we thought it was about Bobby. But it… you let a goddamn _demon_ in.”

“You let in Lucifer.” Mary tries to keep her voice calm, even. Factual, not accusatory. “We always knew you would—”

“You and the demon?”

“And Bobby. And Lucifer. We all knew it was only a matter of time. So me and Bobby and Rex, we made… arrangements.”

“Why?” Sam again.

“For Bobby, retirement.” Mary smirks, just a little. “Let him go out quiet. As quiet as he can let himself go, anyway.”

“And— and ‘Rex’?”

“Don't call him that,” Mary says. “It's a Pack name. You aren't Pack.”

The hurt is a raw and suppurating flash but Sam buries it quickly. He's got the mask on, now. Like he's interviewing a witness. Or a suspect.

“Alright. Go on.”

“For Rex, its personal.”

“‘Lucifer will lose,’” Sam quotes. “You said that to us. When… when we first brought you back.”

“Yes.”

“Why the vendetta?”

“Why do you think?” Mary counters. “Lucifer’s an angel. Rex doesn't think Hell should bow down before Heaven and has sworn to tear apart any demon that does.”

“So you brought the Apocalypse back,” Sam says. “Angels versus demons and humans caught in the middle of both.”

Mary shakes her head. “Rex isn't interested in Earth, or even Heaven; he wants to retake Hell. And he wants Lucifer to suffer while he does.”

“Why do they call him ‘the Dog King’?”

Mary thinks about this, then: “It’s not my story to tell.”

“Bullshit,” Dean snaps.

Mary just shrugs. And then because, apparently, she never learns, she says:

“It’s Rex’s story If you wanna know so bad, you'll have to get it from him.” And Dean’s eyes gleam that vicious, vindictive gleam.

* * *

They set a trap. Worse, they use Mary as bait. She doesn't fight them. She could try, she supposes—they might be reluctant to truly hurt her, and she could use that—but the risks aren't worth it. If they fight, if she gets injured, then Rex will tear them apart or die trying. _Mary must live_ , he'd say, but Mary won't do that to him or her boys. So she goes quiet, let's herself be handcuffed to a radiator in some gutted, abandoned shell of a house.

“This is a mistake,” she tells Sam. His eyes flick between her and his brother, uncertain. Dean just stares down at them, cold and hard, angel blade in one hand and shotgun slung across his shoulder.

“We don't wanna do this,” he says. “But it's for your own good.”

“Sweetheart, no one has ever said those words and had them be true. They're just an excuse.”

“Mom.” Sam, trying to be peacemaker. “Whatever this thing’s done to you… we can help. Like… like before.”

 _Which time?_ Mary doesn't say. Just presses her mouth into a thin, angry line.

She's the bait, but Bobby’s the lure; she doesn't know the details, the boys are too careful for that, and she supposes praying that it doesn't work would be hypocritical. Rex will come. _Mary must live_ , no matter the cost.

He arrives as he always does; a patch of shadow that swells and bubbles and grows. A sulfur-reeking pustule that fills the small room with coils of living, seething smoke. When the mass in the centre bursts it does so in a tumorous mass of blood-red eyes and jagged, vicious claws. Of fangs like knives and a scaled hide of inky, oily black that oozes smoking shadow like antimatter dry ice. It all happens very quickly, those burning eyes focusing on Mary even before the heavily muscled limbs solidify.

Mary’s heart aches—it feels like an age since they've seen each other, while she's been trying to play house—and her mouth opens to say:

“I'm sorry. It's a trap.”

Rex doesn't question, doesn't second-guess. He's running on instinct, and his instinct is to roar and lunge forward. As he does, the blacklights burst to sickly violet light, illuminating the Devil's Trap painted on the floor. Rex slams against the edge with the sizzle of burning flesh, just as the door bursts open and Mary’s boys tumble through.

“Bad move,” she says, and sighs.

Rex throws out a claw and the wall of sheer, violent _will_ sends the boys crashing against the wall. They hit badly, heads cracking and bodies leaving dents in the plaster, but Rex isn't done. Instead, he’a driven his other claw into the half-rotted boards and then _rips_ upwards, shattering both the wood and the lines of the Trap.

One of the boys screams something, terrified, and Rex lunges forward towards Mary. A wall of flame leaps up behind him, and then he's looming over her, teeth bared and eyes burning in hellfire-bright rage.

Mary holds up her hands, showing she's cuffed, and Rex’s snarl is so deep and so loud she feels it in her breastbone. Tendrils of living shadow coalesce around her, hauling her upright even as they slip beneath the the cuffs and tear the metal apart like paper.

“Mom!” she hears, then the sound of boots scrambling on wood. “Mom! No!”

“Don't blame them,” Mary tells Rex, even as he gently helps her stand. “They… mean well.”

“And yet they seem so willing to sacrifice everyone but themselves.”

Mary just sighs. Over Rex’s shoulder, she sees Dean leap through the wall of fire. Rex doesn't even turn as he catches Mary’s boy in his tendrils, hauling Dean into the air and holding him there.

“I should tear them apart.”

“You aren't going to do that,” Mary says. Then she slumps forward, and buries herself against that broad, strange chest. “I've missed you.”

She feels some of the tension bleed from Rex as he brings a claw up to return her embrace. “Mary must live,” he tells her, and she laughs, weak and bitter.

“She's had better days.”

Rex looks like solidified smoke and tar but he's solid enough to the touch. Warm and dry and muscular, chest expanding and contracting with whatever unholy alchemy animates him in lieu of blood and breath.

“Mom!”

Dean, right. Mary exhales, steps back from Rex, and looks at her son. He's dangling upside-down in mid-air, suspended by shadowy tentacles, watching her in horror.

“Put him down,” she tells Rex, then gestures at the wall of flame. “And let Sam through.”

Rex makes a frustrated huffing sound. “Can't I just eat them?” But it's not serious, and he both lowers Dean—with only a minimal amount of dropping—and extinguishes the flames.

“Well, boys,” Mary says to her startled sons. “This is Rex.”

Sam stumbles forward as Dean stumbles back. They're both wide-eyed and staring. Not frightened, exactly—they’re both too world-weary for that—but definitely… unsure of the beast they're seeing. Rex returns their gazes, contemptuous and unflinching, although Mary can see the tips of his tails thrash out of the corner of her eye.

“That… was not what I was expecting,” Dean says after a moment. Mary just rolls her eyes, Rex huffs and begins to pace. Like a caged tiger, back and forth across the small room, keeping himself between Mary and her boys. He doesn't trust them. Maybe, after this, neither does Mary.

“You, um. You're the… the Dog King,” Sam tries. Then, when Rex says nothing: “You've been taking down Lucifer’s, um. Goons.” Still more silence, still more pacing. Sam glances to Mary, then back again. “Do, um. Do you talk?”

“When I've something to say,” is Rex’s reply, growled like the sound of fast-approaching thunder.

“We, um. We haven't seen a demon quite like you before,” Sam tries. Then, when this earns him no reply: “Mom says you helped her. In the other world.”

“Mary must live,” Rex repeats. The next time he passes her in his pacing, Mary reaches out to run reassuring fingers down his arm. She knows how difficult this is for him. She suspects the only reason he hadn't left is because he doesn't want to leave her alone again with the boys.

“Well,” says Sam. “Um. Thank you.”

“Says the boy who baits a trap with his own struggling flesh and blood.”

“What does that even mean, anyway?” Dean snaps, before Sam can respond. “‘Mary must live’?”

“It means what it means,” Rex growls. “Mary must live. Lucifer will lose. Find Bobby Singer.”

“But why?” Sam asks. “Why Mom? Why _Bobby_?”

Except Dean asks: “Why Lucifer?”

Rex’s eyes shift Dean’s way, narrowing. “Lucifer is a false god,” he says. “At his feet, my kind can never be more than grovelling animals.”

“Right. And you think demons deserve more than that?”

Rex hisses in reply, fangs bared and spines bristling. Dean just scoffs and rolls his eyes.

“You're not making your case, buddy.”

Mary hates him, just a little bit. Hates him for the parts of her old, fractured selves she sees reflected in his edges.

“I wouldn't expect _you_ to understand,” Rex says. “The eternally justified, the beloved of God, the gatekeepers of instant absolution.”

“Dude. The fuck you talkin’ about?”

“Tell me. How many of mine have you sent screaming into the void?”

“Not nearly enough,” is Dean's reply. “I ain't never gonna feel guilty for that.”

“Animals, yes?” Rex’s paws are heavy and thudding as he paces across the boards, claws adding little staccato clicks to the sound. “The scum of the world, siphoned off and tortured on the rack, souls and humanity stripped and twisted by Lucifer’s whim. And for every one who falls, who dies unwanted and unloved and alone, who dies unredeemed… for every one, Lucifer _laughs_. Sat atop that pile of the dead and knowing, once and for all, the he is right. That God’s favoured children are a broken mistake, weak and corrupt and doomed to fail. That an ignominious death is the only end to a pitiful life.”

“Nice lecture,” Dean says. “But you're the one who’s been slaughtering its way through Hell.”

Rex sneers and turns away. “Regrettable, but necessary. Hell is full of traitors.”

The boys exchange a look. Mary knows that look. It means they think they've figured out the trick.

“You’re wrong, y’know,” Dean says. “About the whole ‘pitiful death’ thing. See, we used to know a guy. A demon. He was a mean, selfish little prick. But, y’know. When it came down to it, he did the right thing. Helped us, more than once. He died, in the end, but it wasn't a pitiful igno-whatever. Dude marched right up in Lucifer’s face and gutted himself to save us. He died a hero.”

 _Oh,_ Mary thinks. _Oh, Dean. No._

“Oh?” Rex’s voice is like antifreeze; sickly sweet and deadly. “How _charming_. Tell me, did you mourn him? Did you shed a single perfect tear for the foul beast’s end?”

“That surprise you?”

Rex shrugs, a great roil of rotting shadow. “You said yourself; he died to save _you_. In your eyes, that makes a good death. But, tell me. What did he gain?”

“Dude. That's… that's not how it works.”

“Isn't it? You give your meaning to his demise—he died for _you_ , how _noble_ —and proclaim it good. What would he say, do you think, if you asked him?”

Dean shifts, just slightly. Allows the pity to seep into his expression. “I dunno. What _would_ you say, if we asked you. Crowley?”

So, there it is.

Rex—Crowley, the Dog King of Hell—hisses. In hate, in loathing. And in pain. So much pain it breaks Mary’s heart.

“Your Crowley is dead,” Rex says. “You said so yourself; the snivelling little worm gutted itself to _save_ you.” So much pain.

“Y’know,” Dean says. “At first, I thought you were that place’s version of you. Like Bobby, y’know. But you aren't, are you? You're ours.”

Rex roars at that, lunges forward and drives a huge claw right into the floorboards. “I was _never_ ‘yours’,” he snarls. “You made that abundantly clear.”

Dean shifts again, lips thinning and head raising. “Dude,” he says. “What… what happened to you, man?”

That prompts the pacing. Easier to move, Mary knows, than suffer pain in stillness.

“Lucifer ‘happened’,” Rex says. “What do you think?”

“He… resurrected you?”

“At first.”

“Why?” Dean flinches. “I mean, no offence, it's, uh. It's good to have you back—”

“Spare me.”

“—but you guys weren't exactly best buds.”

“He wanted to prove a point,” Rex says. “It _galled_ him, the idea a mere demon could sacrifice itself for something that wasn't him. Worship, he understands. Hubris, he could excuse. But _altruism_? Oh, no. There had to be a trick, wouldn't you say?”

“Well. The thought had crossed our mind…”

Another growl. “Lucifer certainly looked for one. At length. Piece by bloodied piece. Peeling back every pathetic inch of that thrice-dead _worm_. And when he found nothing? His rage burnt colder than the void.”

Rex _seethes_ ; the eye of a storm of roiling shadows and rattling walls, the house’s light bulbs flaring and bursting, one-by-one. The boys are afraid; they move together, back-to-back, armed with knife and gun. Mary watches them, unflinching. It's been a long time since Rex has frightened her with shadow-puppets and light shows. The drama is just emotion; if Rex really wanted them dead, they'd never see him coming.

“Crowley,” Sam says, “whatever happened, we— we’re sorry, man. But we just need you to—”

“To _what_? I carved out my guts to please you! What more can I give? And when Lucifer took those putrid ropes of flesh, when he squeezed the _shit_ from the tubes and _fed it to me_ —”

“Oh, Jesus, dude…”

“—it was then, only then, that he got _creative_.” And then quite suddenly, the howling darkness ends. “And what, do you think, the Father of Sin would have in store for the vain, proud beast that usurped him? That thought itself deserving of something _more_. Of love. Of _salvation_.”

Dean knows:

“Turn you into his own pet hellhound.”

Rex growls, two eyes flicking briefly to Mary. “He took _everything_. My pride, my form, my _name_ —”

“Not everything,” Sam says, eyes bright with his own remembered pain. “You found s-something. Something small. Something he— he'd never notice.”

“Three things.” Rex holds up three claws, folds them down, one-by-one. “Mary must live. Lucifer will lose. Find Bobby Singer.”

“An exit, a mission, and an ally,” Dean says.

Mary scoffs. “A future, freedom, and family,” she says.

“Mom—”

“Lucifer was going to give me to Rex first,” she says, voice flat and cold. “Not to kill. Just to play with. He said I was already Heaven’s brood-bitch, might as well be Hell’s, too. Think he was looking forward to see what I'd give birth to this time.”

“Oh, god. Mom—”

“Don't look at Rex like that,” Mary snaps, because she can see their fingers twitching on their weapons. “All he did was get me away from there, and _keep_ me away.” She moves to stand next to the demon in question, fingers gently resting against the armoured scales of his shoulder.

“Mary gave me back my name,” Rex says. “Gave me back my _self_.” As if it was that easy; as if Rex wasn't all-but non-verbal for months, as if he didn't recoil from every touch and cower in every shadow.

“We found Bobby,” Mary adds. “He helped us. Taught us to survive in that shithole universe. Then we started hunting.”

“The three of you against the whole of Lucifer’s army?” Sam asks.

Mary shrugs. “At first.”

“‘At first’?”

“Lucifer ruled Hell as an imprisoned god,” Rex says. “Feared, but unknown and—for the longest time—unknowable.”

“I'm guessing his reality didn't quite live up to the legend,” Dean says.

Rex grins, glowing and sharp. “Like father like son. Lucifer is no commander. He considers it a privilege to serve him; demands pure fealty and pure sacrifice, and gives nothing in return.” The look Rex flashes Dean is pointed, though Mary suspects her son remains oblivious.

“Turns out,” Mary says, “a lot of Hell was unhappy with the war. They were just too afraid of its commanders to organise against it.”

“Until you,” Sam guesses.

“We started getting defectors,” Rex says. “At first alone, or in pairs. They became the first Packs.”

“They didn't want to fight,” Mary says. “But they didn't want to be fed through Heaven’s meat-grinder, either. They joined up because they saw hope for some kind of future.”

“After the demons,” Rex adds, “came the humans. Spoils from the slave pits of raided nests. Most of them had been bred there; knew nothing else but violation from their demon masters. The Packs had no use for them, but they had nowhere else to go.”

“We couldn't turn them out.” Mary’s heart still clenched at the memory. The pit-slaves had always been the hardest; shivering things bred from and for rape and mutilation, etched in scars and sewn with foul magics. “For most,” she says, “the best we could give them was a quiet death. But others…”

“For all its flaws, humanity can be appallingly resilient,” Rex says. “The wretches would bond with the existing Packs.”

“Not all of them were fit to fight,” Mary says. “But there are other roles in war. And we needed more of them as the numbers grew.”

“You… kept human slaves?” Dean, expression curving into a sneer.

“They weren't slaves,” Mary snaps. “They weren't property.”

“If they wanted to fight, they fought,” Rex says. “If they wanted to shiver in the corner and cry, they could shiver in the corner and cry.”

Mary rolls her eyes. “There was a hospice. We did what we could with what we had.”

“You built an army,” Sam says. “What… what happened to it?”

“Nothing,” Rex says. “We left it there.”

“You abandoned it?”

“No, moron. We knew it was only a matter of time before you idiots pulled out Mary and Lucifer. Each Pack has its own leader, imbued with the Three Crowns. They'll continue the work.”

“Of stopping Lucifer?”

“Of ending Heaven’s pointless war!” Rex hisses, frustrated. “Of pushing back and retaking Hell. Of ensuring the Lucifer of that realm is _never_ released from the Cage.”

“Wait,” Sam says. “I thought—”

“With no vessel for Azazel to prepare, with no Righteous Man to break the first Seal… what _did_ you think?”

“I… I don't know,” he confesses. “I just… That place was a mess. How did it get like that?”

“Michael, we think,” Mary says. “We got an angel in the camp, near the end. Wouldn't give us a name, just told us it was tired of the fighting.”

“It wasn't your precious Castiel, if you're wondering,” Rex says, grin gleefully vicious at shattering the hope on Dean’s face. “I would've recognised it.”

“Whatever,” Dean mutters.

“The angel told us what it knew about what went down,” Mary says, eliding the _eventually_. “They'd tried the same thing they did here, got to the part where the other Mary met that place’s John—”

“It was _loathe_ at first sight, all over again,” Rex adds, a touch too gleefully.

“So they’d just sent in the Cupids—”

“Can't let that pesky free will get in the way of a divine plan!” Too gleeful.

“Rex, enough.”

He growls, but lowers his head in contrition, so Mary continues: “The angel told us it felt… a presence in Heaven. It either didn't know or wouldn't tell us what. But afterwards, Michael just dropped the… the True Vessels breeding program. He was convinced it not only wouldn’t work, but that trying would ruin Heaven.”

“Which, you have to admit,” Rex adds, “was charmingly accurate.”

“So Heaven went straight for Plan B,” Mary continues. “Total annihilation of Earth.”

“Raphael’s plan, if you'll care to cast your minds back,” Rex says. “He and his brother had already done quite the damage to Earth by the time Lilith decided to get Hell involved. After that, it degenerated into a celestial soccer match, with humanity as the ball.”

“Jesus,” mutters Dean. He looks shell-shocked.

“Oh, it gets better, trust me,” says Rex. “Because, recall, it all happened when _someone_ gave the spoiler-sheet to Ol’ Mikey. And who could _possibly_ have been in a position to do that?”

“You?”

“Hah! If only. But no. Even if I'd travelled back in time, why would an archangel listen to a pathetic, snivelling demon?”

“He wouldn't,” Sam says, slowly. “But he’d listen to another archangel. Lucifer. You think our Lucifer, what—?”

“Travelled back in time after you locked him in that wasteland with the express intent of causing it in the first place? Why yes, yes I do.”

“That makes no sense,” Dean says. “It was like that when we first got there. Before Lucifer arrived.”

“It's _time travel_ , you irredeemable cretin,” Rex snarls. “It doesn't matter _when_ it happened, only that it did. Although I shouldn't be surprised; I knew you were three-dimensionally challenged since the time you allowed Mother to trick you into _sending my son to his death_.” Another howl that rattles the windowpanes.

“Rex…”

He rounds on her, eyes bright and teeth bared. “My son!”

“I know, Rex,” Mary says. “I'm not saying let it go.” She puts a hand on his cheek in solidarity. As she does, his eyes fall shut and he sags in exhaustion.

“It… has been a long day.”

“I know. We can go home soon.” She turns to her boys. They look gutted, too. It's been a long day for everyone.

“So now you know,” she says. She makes a hopeless, shrugging gesture with her free hand. “Anything else?”

Dean blinks, then focuses on her. “Mom?”

“Anything else,” she repeats, “you want to know. While we're both here.”

“I… I don't know. Maybe?” He turns to his brother, but Sam is just gaping at Mary like a landed fish.

“Okay,” says Mary. “Okay.” She lets herself fall against Rex’s side; he shifts beneath her so she’s resting against the smooth skin of his neck, not the hard spines of his shoulders and back. “Take me to Bobby’s?” she asks.

“Of course, darling.”

“Wait! Mom?” Dean takes a step forward, hand outstretched.

Mary doesn't look at him, can't bring herself to look at him. “You used me as bait,” she says. “I… I'm gonna need some time.”

“Mom, no. Wait—”

“Rex, let's go.”

And the shadows close over her, and they do.

* * *

She makes it as far as Bobby's den before she collapses into tears. It's pathetic, really; it wasn't _her_ pain that'd been gouged out and examined. If anything, Rex should be the one howling.

He isn't, though. He just lowers her to the boards, and wraps limbs around her as she sobs into his chest.

“Rex? Rex, that you? Did you find— Mare? Mare!” Heaving thudding footsteps, then Rex unwinds just enough to let Bobby close. “Mare, what happened? Jesus, you hurt?”

She shakes her head, tries to say she's fine but even that lie chokes in her throat. She feels more than hears the deep rumble of Rex’s voice as he explains what happened. Bobby's response is, predictably, a storm of curses and rough-fingered hands, holding the three of them close.

“I tried,” Mary manages, when she can finally speak again. “I tried so hard. To love them.”

“I know,” says Bobby. “I know you did.”

“Family,” Rex adds, “is always the knife that cuts the deepest.”

God, but Mary hates it when he's right.

* * *

The pain fades, because pain does. All of Mary's things are back at the Bunker, so Bobby takes her into town to buy some basics to get her by. He's found an old junker somewhere and is diligently restoring it (“gotta see if I still remember how”) so, in the afternoon, Mary leaves him to it and helps Rex put some of the new Hounds through their paces in the woods.

They're new converts but old followers: one red-eyed ex-Crossroads demon built somewhat like a serpent-featured centipede; the other a black-eye that's little more than a grotesquely elongated pile of blade-sharp bones. Both are obviously uncomfortable to be embodied topside, especially staring down a born-and-bred hunter. Mary isn't sure who they're more frightened of: her or Rex. (“You, my dear, of course. By _far_.”)

Neither demon is much into combat, and neither is destined to be an Eater. Red’s a witch, specialising in warding and cursing. Black is fast and good at tight spaces, which immediately screams spy. Still, they should know how to handle themselves in a fight.

“Everyone’s going to be against you, now,” Mary tells them. “Heaven, Hell. Most humans that aren't Pack, and the ones that will work with you sure as shit aren't gonna see you as anything more than disposable monsters.” She looks up at them. “But you aren't. You are what you are, and what you are, are the demons they're gonna help send Lucifer sobbing back to his daddy. You remember that, when the time comes.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they mutter.

“I don't care if everyone’s against us,” Black says. “At least we're _doing_ something. Something that isn't rolling over sucking archangel dick.”

“Hell is _ours_ ,” says Red. “It might be a shithole, but it's our shithole.”

“You know,” Mary says, not looking up from where she's sorting salt rounds and checking her shotgun. “There's nothing that says it _has_ to be a shithole.”

The two demons look at each other, then at Rex, then back at Mary.

“Lady,” says Red, “it’s _Hell_.”

Mary shrugs. “Kids, I spent nearly four decades dead in Heaven and let me tell you, that place? Is the shithole.” She loads two rounds, then snaps the gun back together, loud and flashy. “Now,” she says. “You run. I hunt. One. Two. Three…”

* * *

The boys give her all of a day before they start ringing. And texting. And ringing again.

 _we just wanna no ur ok_ , is the general theme of Dean’s.

 _Mom, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,_ is Sam’s.

Either way, Mary isn't ready to hear it. It's the fifteen minutes of non-stop buzzing while she's trying to catch up on _Twin Peaks_ that finally cracks her.

“Ugh!” she says, brandishing her phone in frustration. “Just… shut up!”

She’s currently leaning on Rex, who's drinking (“depressingly plebeian”) Scotch from a vase that, in his claw at least, serves as a tumbler. Mary gets about halfway through dumping her ringing phone into his drink when a tendril of shadow catches her and confiscates the device.

“Ah-ah-ah,” Rex says. “There is _not_ more where that came from and if you force me into drinking Bobby’s swill I shan't forgive you.”

Mary makes a _pssh_ sound but doesn't resist the confiscation. She slouches back against Rex’s belly with an exaggerated surliness that puffs up a little cloud of red-tinged shadow. “Can't you banish it into a pit of la— hey, what are you—?”

Except Rex has already thumbed the slider and put the call on speaker. Mary buries her head behind her knees. Not very adult of her, but Rex can deal.

The clamour of voices when the call connects is difficult to discern, though Mary makes out the general sentiment (“Mom!”). Both her boys are struggling to talk at once, though that stops as soon as Rex growls:

“Hello, boys.”

A pause, then:

“Crowley!”

And:

“Where's Mom? What have you done to her?”

“Right here. And I'm assisting her with a little problem.”

“What ‘problem’?” Dean says. “Mom? Mom, can you hear me?”

Mary just buries herself in Rex’s armpit while he says: “The problem of her two little stalkers. It seems they can't take a ‘don't call us, we’ll call you’ seriously.”

“Fuck you, Crowley. Put Mom on. Right now.”

“She can take the phone if she wants it.”

Rex holds it out in invitation. Mary pushes it away and pulls her t-shirt over her head to try and hide. It's silly and petty but despite that—maybe because of it—she's biting back laughter and so, from the sound of it, is Rex.

“Ah, offer declined. So sad.”

“Crowley—”

“Tell you what,” says Rex. “In respect for our long and thrilling history together, I'll do you a little deal.”

“Crowley, I swear to god, if you don't let us speak to Mom—”

“The deal,” Rex says, pointedly, “is this: I am going to turn off this phone, and then I am going to reverently lay it to rest in the bottom drawer. Tomorrow, your dear beleaguered mother will purchase a new phone whose number you will not know and will, on pain of retribution, not attempt to find out. And when Mary has forgiven your little stunt of using her for monster bait, _she_ will contact _you_. I believe I have come to know your mother quite well during our time in the apocalyptic crapheap you consigned us to and, as such, would offer one suggestion. And that is that the more you disrespect my dear friend’s boundaries the _substantially_ less likely she is to return your calls. Do you understand?”

“You don’t know jack about Mom, you conniving sack of shit.”

Rex just sighs theatrically. “A risk I am willing to take. Nonetheless, as charming as this little catch-up has been, we have the rest of _Twin Peaks_ to rewatch, so… toodles, pets.”

“Crow—” is as far as Dean gets before Rex disconnects the call.

Mary sighs, emerging from her clothing and rolling over to ball against the soft curve of Rex’s belly. She hears him, (mostly) true to his word, turn off the phone and drop it on the side-table, following it with the glass _clink_ of his glass. Then he shifts, and curls his big body around her.

In the background, TV people scheme incomprehensible schemes. Here, it's warm and dark and smells like char and sulfur. The scales of Rex’s belly are soft and smooth beneath Mary’s fingers; made familiar and safe from a hundred nights spent huddled here for shelter against enemies and elements alike. Rex is a monster and a demon but he cares about Mary and he won't let anyone hurt her, even her own flesh-and-blood.

“I don't know how to be what they want me to be,” she confesses. Her voice is barely a whisper and she isn't even sure Rex hears it until he sighs and says:

“I'm not the one to give advice on parenting, luv.” A pause, then: “But, perhaps, it's not you that needs to change.”

Mary thinks about this. “Rowena didn't. Change, I mean. Into… into a ‘mother’.” Whatever that's supposed to be.

“Mm, no. Quite intentionally not.”

“Do you hate her for it?”

“Oh, yes,” Rex says, but there's no malice there. That pain is something Lucifer burnt out, for better or for worse. “Mother was a vicious bitch who never should have bred. Her son was the same.”

“Gavin didn't hate you. At the end.”

“Gavin was a milquetoast idiot who leapt gleefully to his death after being sold on pretty lies of it being noble.”

 _So did you,_ Mary doesn't say.

“Did you ever wish you’d been”—not _a better father_ , that's not quite right—”what he'd needed you to be, rather than what you were?”

Rex, to his credit, thinks about this. It's difficult, Mary knows, for him to connect with his old emotions. He has the memories—or enough of them—to know the shapes and outlines, but he doesn't _feel_ it with the intensity he did before Lucifer stripped it all away. Rex’s family wasn't one of the three things Rex kept to survive. Mary feels guilty about that. Sometimes. Probably not often enough.

“If I hadn't been who I was,” he says finally, “he wouldn't have been who he was. And, in the end, he was a good lad. A moron. But… a good lad.”

“You been reading Bobby’s books, huh?” Mary smirks against Rex’s scales.

“Mm. Well. One has to fill in one’s time.”

Mary huffs then, after a while, rolls over. Rex shifts to accomodate, until he's spooned along Mary’s back, tails curled around her front and tickling beneath her chin. On the television, Mr. FBI talks to the dude with one arm about a ring.

“I don't understand this show at all,” Mary admits.

Rex just huffs something like a laugh.

* * *

“Do you ever regret it? Not having children?”

Bobby looks up from where he's inspecting an avocado. They're in the supermarket, picking up this and that on the way back from buying Mary a new phone.

“You're kidding, right?” he says.

Mary winces. “I mean… would you’ve? Without the whole—” She waves a hand, trying out a vague gesture for _apocalypse_.

“Hm.” Bobby puts the avocado down, and picks up another one. “Nope. Never wanted them. And not just ‘cause of—” He copies Mary’s gesture. “Kids, they're the ultimate one-way ticket. You wanna be damn sure you wanna be on that train before it leaves the station.”

“I wasn't,” Mary points out.

Bobby’s eyes slide her way beneath the brim of his cap. “Yeah, well,” he says. “That ain't exactly your fault.”

Mary nods.

They move on, to look at tomatoes, when she says:

“I was the same. About kids, I mean. Never wanted ‘em, not after what happened to Mom.”

“Oh?”

“It wasn't… bad, exactly. I mean, Mom, she was a good Mom. It was just…”

“Once she was a mother, that's all she was?” Bobby suggests.

Mary nods, guilt clawing at her guts like a pack of Eaters.

“You can't be a mom and a hunter,” Mary says. “They tell you you can, but they lie.” Lord knows John had tried, and failed miserably. Because he hadn't been prepared to sacrifice enough of himself to do it. Mary doesn't blame him. Or Dean, who tried to pick up the slack but had been _so young_ ; too young, really, to have had enough pieces to give.

Bobby makes a thoughtful sound as he puts tomatoes in their basket. “Your boys,” he says, “they ain't exactly, well. Boys.”

Mary laughs, humourless. “I think technically they're older than I am.” The years in Heaven don't count; being stuck in that Stepford nightmare on repeat wasn't living.

“Right,” Bobby says. “So. You can love ‘em. But this whole self-sacrificing motherhood thing? I reckon that's gotta come with a statue of limitations. You ain't expected to wipe the noses and kiss the boo-boos of damn-near middle-aged men. And you shouldn't let them get away with treatin’ you like you’re a bad person for not doing it. You may be their mom, but you were Mary first. So be Mary. When you know who that is, the rest will come on its own.”

“I tried that,” Mary says. “It… ended badly.” Bobby knows the story, no need to open old wounds.

“So you fucked up once, so what? That don't mean you give up. It means you get up and try again. Look at Rex, for godssake. Nearly four centuries he's been fallin’ flat on his face from trippin’ over his own ego. He still gets up and keeps trying.”

Except for the time he didn't, Mary supposes. Except, well. He learnt from that failure, too.

She sighs, closes her eyes. Then opens them and bumps her shoulder into Bobby’s. “You're a wise old asshole, anyone ever tell you that?” She grins at him, playful, as he pulls down the brim of his cap and tries to pretend he isn't blushing.

“Yeah,” he says. “Well. One of us around here's gotta be.”

* * *

She speaks to Sam first. Sam is easier, Mary thinks. Safer. Not as beholden to tatted old memories of Mother Mary, Perfect Wife.

“I'm doing good,” she tells him, legs kicking back and forth as she rocks on the porch swing. “It's nice up here. Lots of stars.” She's calling on her old phone, not her new one. Mary knows Sam is smart enough, kind enough, to realise what that means.

“And, uh. Bobby?”

“Enjoying retirement. Plus clean water and electricity. We call him Hour-Shower Singer.”

Sam chuckles. “No more hunting?”

“A little. He helps us with the Hounds sometimes.”

“That's, uh. That's Crowley’s people?”

“Yeah.”

A pause, stilted an awkward. Mary can almost hear what Sam is stopping himself from saying ( _“are you sure you should be training demons”_ ). But, in the end, all that comes out is:

“And, um. You? Doing much hunting?”

“Yeah. Just came back from a salt and burn near Denver.”

“Alone?”

Mary shrugs, even though Sam can't see her. It's getting cold out, but she has a throw around her shoulders and a mug of coffee. The smell of Bobby’s cooking—-and the sound of him arguing with Rex over the ingredients—wafts out from inside the house.

“For that run,” she says. “For bigger stuff, I take one of the Packs.”

“You… take demons monster hunting?”

“They need the practice.” Mary smirks. “Most of Rex’s people used to have desk jobs. Contract lawyers and soul-witches. They're ready to fight”—for the most part—“they just need someone to show them how.”

“Well… if you're sure.”

“Hell is their home,” Mary says. “Can you blame them for wanting to make it something they can be proud of?” As Rex would say, Lucifer’s an arse and God’s left the building. There's no one left to tell them what they can or can't be.

“I guess not.”

“Besides,” Mary adds. “If they like it there, they might spent less time giving us trouble up here.”

That, Sam does laugh at. “Okay, Mom. Just… be careful, okay?”

“I will.”

There's another one of those not-quite-comfortable pauses. Then Mary says:

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“I… I need to tell you something.” _You and your brother,_ she doesn't add. Because she's a coward, perhaps.

“Yeah, Mom. Of course, anything.”

 _Anything but this,_ she doesn't say.

“I… I’ve changed my name. Back to Campbell.” In as much as she can, of course. Given that, technically, she's been dead for over thirty years. But she supposes it's the intent that counts.

Silence. When Sam finally speaks again, his voice waivers. Just a bit.

“Y-yeah?”

“Yes.” Oddly, it's that waver that gives her own voice strength. “It's not… it's not about you,” she says. “Or your brother. You’re good men and you should be proud. But I have to… I have to do this for me.”

“B-because of Dad.”

It's not a question but Mary thinks about it as if it is. “No,” she says eventually. “Not because of John. He was… I don't blame him for what happened. They used him just as much as they used me.”

Sam doesn't ask who “they” are. He knows. Of course he knows; after all, Heaven used him, too.

“O-okay,” he says. “Okay, yeah. Okay. You, um. You want me to tell Dean?”

“Yes,” says Mary who is, in this, if nothing else, a coward. “Yes, please.”

“Okay.” Another silence. Then: “Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Did… did you ever really love him? Dad, I mean.”

Mary has thought about this. A lot. She still has no good answer for it.

“The girl who married you in Vegas,” she eventually says. “Did you ever love her?”

There's a shifting sound, like Sam is hiding his head in his hands. Mary thinks she hears him swear, somewhere away from the phone’s receiver. When he speaks again, he's trying to sound upbeat but Mary can hear the tears.

“You, uh. You know about that, huh?”

“You know Rex. Loves the sound of his own voice.” Once he’d found it again.

Sam gives a chuckle, but it's thick and wet. Sad.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I know. And… I get it.”

“I'm sorry,” she says, because she is. Not because of herself, but because they've all had to deal with this, in their own way.

“Hey, um. Mom? I'd better go.”

“Okay.”

“You take care, okay? And… and call if you need anything.”

“I will. And I will.”

“Okay. I… okay. Love you, Mom.”

Mary closes her eyes and leans back in the swing. “Love you, too sweetheart.” It doesn't even hurt when she says it. For the first time, the words make her feel light. Hopeful. That there's a future made by and for her; one in which her sons are a part, not the whole.

She hangs up the phone. Out in the forest, beyond the light of the house, owls cry. Above, the stars glisten like souls scattered across a demon's inky hide. Behind, Rex and Bobby argue over the best way to serve pasta.

And Mary? Mary just takes another swig of beer, closes her eyes, and looks forward to tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Now I'm knocking like Jehovah; let me in now, let me in now_  
>  _Bill Gates, Donald Trump, let me in now_  
>  _Spin now, I got money to lend my friends now_  
>  _We in now, candy Benz, Kenwood and 10"s now_  
>  _[I win now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f85eXyaZtUM)_.


End file.
